Amazon's Sumit Sahay joins Cloudtail as its new CEO

Sahay's experience of working across categories for the US e-tailer Amazon prompted the move by Cloudtail's management to bring him on board as the CEODigbijay Mishra | TNN | May 06, 2017, 09:10 IST

Amazon India's largest seller, Cloudtail, a joint venture between N R Narayana Murthy's Catamaran Venture and Amazon, has brought in a senior level executive from the e-tailer as its new CEO.

The JV partners have done an interesting swap of executives wherein Cloudtail has roped in Sumit Sahay, who was previously Amazon's director for category management, as its CEO, while Madhu M, the erstwhile chief of Cloudtail, has taken over Sahay's role at Amazon, people aware of the development told TOI.

Sahay joined the board of Cloudtail last month, regulatory filings showed. A spokesperson of Cloudtail confirmed Sahay taking over as the CEO of Amazon's largest merchant. The spokesperson, in an emailed response, said, "Sumit will be responsible for driving the operations for Cloudtail. However, as a company policy we don't divulge details on board members."

An Amazon spokesperson too confirmed Sahay's moving out of the organisations but did not offer a comment on Madhu's appointment.

Sources said Sahay's experience of working across categories for the American e-tailer prompted the move by Cloudtail's management to bring him on board as the CEO. Before taking on as the director of category management, Sahay was looking after the home and kitchen business.

In his last role, he was involved with multiple categories at Amazon India. "Having him lead Cloudtail would work well for Amazon because he's familiar with the company," a person aware of Sahay's move said.

While Cloudtail is the largest merchant on Amazon, it has also been the primary vehicle for selling Amazon's new categories in India. During the initial years, Cloudtail largely was dealing with electronics and mobiles but the vendor has now become an important channel for Amazon's fashion and grocery products. Cloudtail reported revenues of Rs 4,591 crore for the year ending 31, March 2016, a four-fold increase.

Cloudtail used to contribute about 40% of total sales on Amazon India but the online retailer has been trying to bring that down after the government's directive last year.

In a note last year, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) said no single vendor or their group companies can contribute more than 25% of the sales on a platform.

This was being seen as an effort to clamp down on the monopoly of top sellers on e-commerce marketplaces paving way for a more level-playing field. As per sources, Cloudtail's contribution to overall Amazon has decreased but it is nowhere close to the rules formed by the government last year. WS Retail is also one such big merchant on Flipkart even though both the companies are not directly related.